WELCOME to the Official Blog of the 2012 Master National Hunting Test, October 18-28, brought to you by the Retriever News and written by Tina Styan & Gwen Jones. We hope you enjoy these daily updates on the 2012 Master National, held this year in and around Demopolis, Alabama.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Day Seven of the Master National

Our first stop on this sunny, hot Friday was at Flight D at the "Censored" test. When we arrived they had 60 or so dogs left to run. The test had changed considerably since yesterday afternoon. There was little to no wind to aid the dogs on their marks and the heavy dew didn't help any either. Out of five dogs we saw run, four of them had handles. We hope the sun rising up creates a little more breeze to make things improve for them.

We caught up with Flight A with about twenty dogs left to run in the "Give Me A Brake" test. We were told that the work was solid this morning with just a couple of handles on the long, middle bird. They should wrap up this morning and will be going to "Are We Having Fun Yet?" later today.

As we drove up to both Flight B and Flight C, they were packing up and moving to their next test. We are going to try and catch up with them there...Flight B was going to "Eagle's Nest" and Flight C was moving across the gravel road to "Oh No, Mr. Bill!"
We caught up with Flight B at "Eagle's Nest." The gallery feels that this is a fair test, giving the dogs an opportunity to hunt all three marks. This test showcases the tenacity of the dogs ... the blind is challenging but fair. It is black and white whether the dog does it and the diversion shot and lunging water add the challenge. We were told that 25-30% were handling on the middle bird.

We made our way over to Flight C at "Oh No, Mr. Bill!" just as they were shutting down for the day due to the glare of the afternoon sun. They had 63 dogs called back to this test and had ran 27 of them. The general consensus was that half of the dogs had handled and half had picked up the birds clean. Most of the handles were on the left-hand mark.